WTH happened to an objective news media?

Ari Fleischer joins us to talk about his new book

Three takeaways from our pod this week about the news media:

1. Mainstream media has boiled down to college-educated Democrats preaching to other college-educated Democrats.

2. Journalism schools should make more effort to bring ideological diversity into the classroom.

3. Most channels have editorial shows and news shows. But on some cable networks, it’s a distinction without a difference. It’s time to rebuild the firewall.

This podcast has hosted a good number of reporters from the so-called mainstream media. They are fine, honorable people who believe the job of a reporter is to report the news, and we’ve been lucky to have them on. But, Ari Fleischer argues in his new book Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias: Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong―And Just Doesn't Care, they are in the minority. Both the reporters of a newer generation and their editors believe part of the job of a journalist is to sort right from wrong and tell the reader so.

Many have taken to describing the growing ranks of unhinged journos as a Trump era phenomenon; but that’s not the case. Trump pushed many over the Rubicon, but much of the mainstream press had been sailing in its waters for years (or have you forgotten Dan Rather’s perfervid embrace of a forged document about George W. Bush’s National Guard Service?). Of course, we all have more choices nowadays… and that’s part of what has deepened divisions among Americans. We used to be entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. Now we can cherrypick “facts” as well.

For your hosts, perhaps the biggest question is whether there is any solution to this problem. You won’t be entirely satisfied with the answer; neither are we. But a reliable free press is an intrinsic part of our democracy, and it is worth fighting for.

Note: The pod will be on hiatus (which Dany cannot pronounce properly) in August. We may do a show here and there if the news merits.

HIGHLIGHTS

What’s happened to the press?

AF: What's happened is journalists have turned into activists. It is so beyond the old liberal/ conservative bias, they have now gotten permission from their editors, top bosses to become activists for a cause

AF: Back when Ronald Reagan was president, most Americans got their news from CBS, ABC, and NBC some 50, 55 million people watched those three network shows. And now it's down to about 20 million watching those shows. As Fox News [was] born and people could go to conservative media, and people's interest in the internet where you could have so many different options, grew more diffuse. Then came social media. Social media started to license reporters to give their opinions, where in the past we all knew the press was liberal, but they knew their job was to be objective. They said their job was to be fair. Well, as soon as you could start tweeting things and letting your opinion rip and get more followers and get praised by Hollywood, it really became a tendency for many mainstream reporters to say that was their psychic income.

AFT: Then along came Trump. And when Trump won in 2016, many mainstream reporters decided that it was their job to save the Republic from the bad decision that the people had made. And so they went after Donald Trump, they started to put on the air information that never should have been put on the air. Information that was unsubstantiated, unverified, such as the Steele dossier

Democrats reporting Democratic news to Democrats?

AF: There's a 2018 study that I cite in my book from Pew showing the only group of Americans who say that the press understands them are college-educated Democrats. So what you have is a group of college-educated Democrat voters, the mainstream media, telling stories and reporting news only for fellow college-educated Democrats. If you're an independent, no matter whether you have a high school degree or college, you say the press doesn't understand you. If you're a Democrat with a high school degree only, you say the press doesn't understand you. Republicans of course have been saying it for decades. The press has driven itself into a very narrow ideological cul-de-sac where they can now only relate to fellow college-educated Democrats.

Wasn’t CNN meant to be the antidote to Fox and MSNBC?

AF: I think what happened to CNN was under Jeff Zucker, the former man who ran CNN, they thought when Trump was running in 2016, that the more they showed Donald Trump, the less people would vote for Donald Trump. I think that's part of the groupthink in a newsroom. When you're that Democratic, when you're that liberal, when everybody in the newsroom thinks alike, looks alike, tweets alike, you think the more this guy talks Trump, the more everybody's going to vote against him.

So then what happened was after making the mistake of helping Donald Trump in reality to get elected president, they realized they didn't need to go in a different direction and fix what they did wrong. And that's why Jeff Zucker allowed CNN reporters to just let their opinions rip. I mean, Jim Acosta, a White House reporter in the briefing room, giving his opinion? That was unheard of when I was there. Other than for Helen Thomas, who was a columnist. And Jim Acosta went way beyond Helen Thomas.

Can you confirm your suspicion about left-leaning reporters?

AF: I decided to hire an opposition researcher to pull the public registration records of the White House Press Corps, the 49 reporters who sit in those 49 seats and see how many are Democrats, how many are Republicans. By a ratio of 12 to 1, the White House Press Corps, Democrat to Republican. Now, why isn't it one to one? Why isn't it even? Or can you imagine what the news would look like if it was 12 to 1 Republican to Democrat? Can you imagine the pummeling Joe Biden would be getting from the Press Corps? Can you imagine how the news we're told would be different?

But why???

AF: I went to Columbia journalism school twice at their invitation to address classes. Once in 1998, after the Dole, Clinton race of '96. And once in 2020, right before COVID. And both times I asked the group of reporters, future reporters, how many of you voted for the Republican in the previous presidential? How many for the Democrat? 24 to nothing for the Democrat, not a single Republican vote. This is the problem. My first chapter is called original sin. And it just shows how the people who go into journalism are overwhelmingly college-educated, Democratic voters. They think alike, they act alike, and especially again on social issues, on issues pertaining to race. They have a point of view and no two years of journalism school or one year of journalism school is going to shake it out of them and make them neutral.

Why don’t more reporters realize there is a real problem when Americans don’t believe the news?

AF: They read the polls, they know how overwhelmingly the American people think that they're biased, overwhelmingly the American people think they don't tell the news fully, accurately or fairly. But their reaction is that this means there's something wrong with our consumers. Not that there's something wrong with us. And this is one reason that the mainstream media is in decline. Now, any corporation, any business that is losing customers and sees the public perception of their company is so bad would say, "What's wrong with us? What do we need to change?" But reporters just dig in deeper and say, there's something wrong with our consumers, or the well has been poisoned by conservatives, or Fox news is pulling the wool over people's eyes and that's the problem.

Is there a Fox News problem?

AF: If you look at their nighttime shows, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker, to a lesser degree but, Tucker. And they make no excuses, they state that they're partisan and in their opinion shows at night. But I'll take Fox's daytime shows, and daytime reporters, and daytime anchors over CNNs and MSNBC's any day for fairness and neutrality. I think the best show on news is Brett Baier show at 6:00 at night, is the most fair objective, interesting hour long show. And in my CNN chapter, I say verse after verse from the CNN anchors and CNN daytime reporters, including their business reporters, who gave anti-Trump anti-Republican opinions on the air. I'm not talking about, they quoted Democrats more than they quoted Republicans, which they often do. The reporters let it rip, giving their opinions

What about January 6 coverage?

AF: One of my chapters is called Suppression and what you weren't told, what the media didn't tell you. So I've been very critical of President Trump and his statements about the election being stolen. I said on Fox News Live, the day the election was determined the Saturday after the Tuesday election, I said, "I'm an American before I'm a Republican. Congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden." And nothing has changed for me when it comes to that

Did they criticize Hillary Clinton when she, in 2018, said, "That Donald Trump was an illegitimate president." Or, when Jimmy Carter said, "That Donald Trump was an illegitimate president." Or when Terry McCullough, the former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee said, "That George Bush stole the 2000 election from Al Gore."? No, no, no.

How do we fix this?

AF: Here's the solution that I advocate in my book, journalism schools need to really start to figure out how to welcome in conservatives to journalism and conservatives need to want to go into journalism. You need newsrooms with diversity of thought. Newsrooms today treasure diversity of gender, diversity of sexual orientation, diversity of race, but the most powerful diversity of all is diversity of the mind, diversity of thought.

I think that people are yearning to hear the news fairly, objectively, neutrally and then reach their conclusions. I think people are tired of being told what their conclusions should be. And this is why this experiment at CNN is fascinating to me. Can they actually return to objectivity? Will they have viewers if they do it, or do we really want to just to watch news that makes us feel comfortable? But I do think there's a pendulum and a cycle to everything. And people ask me all the time, "Where can I go to get news that's fair and objective?" I think there would be a market for it if somebody were to do it.

We all know the right is mad about media bias. Should the left be as well?

AF: If you were a liberal in 2016 and you got your news from CNN or MSNBC, or The New York times, you were certain when you went to bed or when you woke up on election day, that Hillary was going to win, you were certain. And then when you go to bed and you find out she didn't, you think, "There's got to be a reason. Everybody I know, everybody told me she'd win. So what happened? It couldn't be the people." Voila, collusion. And then the more CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times piled on about collusion, the more liberals thought, "You see, I was right. I knew Hillary was going to win. Trump stole it, because he was working with Putin." And this leads to damage to our country. So I make the case in the book that conservatives have known for decades that the press is biased. We get it. We have to work twice as hard to deal with it. But liberals in many ways are hurt the most by liberal bias because they're taught a world that's warped, and they think it's true.

What’s your favorite story from the book?

AF: On the Saturday after the election when the networks declared Joe Biden the winner and Fox News declared Joe Biden the winner, church bells went off in Paris. Fireworks went off in London. ABC, NBC and CNN all reported, live on the air, that this was part of the international celebration of Joe Biden's victory, celebrating Donald Trump's defeat, people around the world, because that's how they thought of it. When you were in a newsroom and everybody you know is celebrating Donald Trump's defeat and then you see fireworks or hear church bells, you think, "Aha, the world thinks just like we do." Well, you know what? It was the weekly call to mass in Paris. It happens every Saturday night. And the fireworks in London was a commemoration of a 500 year old holiday called Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night, celebrating the failed assassination attempt on King James in 1605. Nothing to do with America's election.

When your mindset is the world celebrating, you shoehorn events into it, and then because you're a reporter you have the power to go on the air and just tell people that. Well, they were all wrong. And did they retract it? Nope.

Full transcript here.

SHOWNOTES

• New Book Exposes ‘Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias’ of Left-Wing Media (Daily Signal, 7/9/22)

• Meet Ari Fleischer (Richard Nixon Foundation, 7/14/22)

• Americans’ Trust in Media Dips to Second Lowest on Record (Gallup, 10/7/21) (note: old poll but there is not a recent one published on 2022 data)

• U.S. journalists differ from the public in their views of ‘bothsidesism’ in journalism (Pew Research Center, 7/13/22)

• Partisan divides in media trust widen, driven by a decline among Republicans (Pew Research Center, 8/30/21)

• Ari Fleischer: Media Has Culture-Related Issues (Barrett Sport Media, 7/13/22)

• Liberals Support Diversity Everywhere Except the Newsroom – Can Journalism Be Saved? (Spectator, 7/10/22)

• Axios AM Number 3: Trust in media hits new low (Axios, 7/8/22)

• Exclusive: Investigation Reveals White House Press Corps Is 12 to 1 Democrat (The Federalist, 7/6/22)

• From High Confidence After Watergate to Low Now, How Did Media Trust Erode? (UVA, 6/15/22)

• Democrats cannot afford to cater to only a hyper-educated class. It’s time to pop the bubble. (The Washington Post, 10/14/21)

• Is the media doomed? (Politico, 1/21/22)